for this for the whispering voices get mixed together, and we dare not abide by our own thoughts, because we think them our own, and not God's: and this be cause we only now and then endeavor to know in earnest. It is only given to the habitually true to know the difference. He knew it, because all His blessed life long He could say, "My judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the will of Him which sent me."

The practical result and inference of all this is a very simple, but a very deep one: the deepest of exist ence. Let life be a life of faith. Do not go timorously about, inquiring what others think, and what others believe, and what others say. It seems the easiest, it is the most difficult thing in life to do this- believe in God. God is near you. Throw yourself fearlessly upon Him. Trembling mortal, there is an unknown might within your soul, which will wake when you command it. The day may come when all that is hu man and woman-will fall off from you, as they did from Him. Let His strength be yours. Be inde pendent of them all now. The Father is with you. Look to Him, and He will save you.

man

XVI.

[Preached October 20, 1850.]

THE NEW COMMANDMENT OF LOVE TO ONE ANOTHER.

JOHN xiii. 34.—“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.'

THESE words derive impressiveness from having been spoken immediately before the last Supper, and on the eve of the great Sacrifice: the commandment of Love issued appropriately at the time of the Feast of Love, and not long before, the great Act of Love. For the love of Christ was no fine saying it cost Him His life to say these words with meaning, “As I have loved you."

There is a difficulty in the attempt to grasp the meaning of this command, arising from the fact that words change their meaning. Our Lord affixed a new significance to the word Love. It had been in use, of course, before, but the new sense in which He used it made it a new word.

:

His law is not adequately represented by the word Love; because love is, by conventional usage, appropriated to one species of human affection, which, in the commoner men, is the most selfish of all our feel ings; in the best, too exclusive and individual to represent that charity which is universal.

Nor is charity a perfect symbol of his meaning; for charity by use is identified with another form of love, which is but a portion of it,almsgiving, and too saturated with that meaning to be entirely disengaged from it, even when we use it most accu rately.

Benevolence or philanthropy, in derivation, come nearer to the idea but yet you feel at once that these words fall short; they are too tame and cool; toc merely passive, as states of feeling rather than forms of life.

We have no sufficient word. There is, therefore, no help for it, but patiently to strive to master the meaning of this mighty word Love, in the only light that is left us, the light of the Saviour's life: “As T have loved you;" that alone expounds it.

We will dispossess our minds of all preconceived notions; remove all low associations, all partial and conventional ones. If we would understand this law, it must be ever a "new" commandment, ever receiv! ing fresh light and meaning from His life.

Take, I. The novelty of the law"That ye love one another??

II. The spirit or measure of it "As I have loved you?"

I. Its novelty. A "new commandment:" yet that' law was old. See 1 John ii. 7, 8.

1

1. It was new as a historical fact. We talk of the apostolic mission as a matter of course; we say that the apostles were ordered to go and plant churchés, and so we dismiss the great fact. But we forget that the command was rather the result of a spirit

working from within, than of an injunction working from, without. That spirit was Love.

And when that new spirit was in the world, see how straightway it created a new thing. Men before that had travelled into foreign countries: the naturalist, to collect specimens; the historian, to accumulate facts; the philosopher, to hive: up wisdom, or else he had stayed in his cell or grove to paint pictures of beautiful love. But the spectacle of an Apostle Paul crossing oceans, not to conquer kingdoms, nor to hive up knowledge, but to impart life, not to accumulate stores for self, but to give, and to spend himself, was new in the history of the world. The celestial fire had touched the hearts of men, and their hearts flamed; and it caught, and spread, and would not stop. On they went, that glorious band of brothers, in their strange enterprise, over oceans, and through forests, penetrating into the dungeon, and to the throne; to the hut of the savage feeding on human flesh, and to the shore lined with the skin-clad inhabitants of these far Isles of Britain. Read the account given by Tertullian of the marvellous rapidity with which the Christians increased and swarmed, and you are reminded of one of those vast armies of ants which move across a country in irresistible myriads, drowned by thousands in rivers, cut off by fire, consumed by man and beast, and yet fresh hordes succeeding inter minably to supply their place.

A new voice was heard; a new yearning upon earth; man pining at being severed from his brother, and longing to burst the false distinctions which had kept the best hearts from each other so long, an infant cry of life the cry of the young Church of

Godo And all this from Judea the narrowest, most bigoted, most intolerant nation on the face of the earth.

Now, I say that this was historically a new tning.

20 It was new in extent. It was, in literal words, an old commandment, given before both to Jew and Gentile. To the Jew; as, for instance, in Lev. xix. 18. To the Gentile, in the recognition which was so often made of the beauty of the law in its partial application, as in the case of friendship, patriotism, domestic attachment, and so on.

ૐ

But the difference lay in the extent in which these words "one another" were understood. By them, or rather by "neighbor," the Jew meant his countryman ; and narrowed that down again to his friends among his countrymen; so that the well-known Rabbinical gloss upon these words, current in the days of Christ, was, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy." And what the Gentile understood by the extent of the law of love, we may learn from the wellknown words of their best and wisest, who thanked heaven that he was born a man, and not a brute; a Greek, and not a barbarian; as if to be a barbarian were identical with being a brute.

Now listen to Christ's exposition of the word neighbor."Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies." And He went further. As a specimen of a neighbor he specially selected cone of that ration whom, as a theologian and a patriot, every Jew had been taught to hate. And just as the application of electricity to the innumerable wants of auman life, and to new ends